FSU students gather to discuss implications of hallucinogenic drugs

Sep. 22, 2013

The Psychedelic Experience conference brought together around 50 FSU students to discuss a number of topics related to hallucinogenic drug use and the societal and political implications of psychedelics. / Carlo Piantini/FSView

Written by

Carlo Piantini

Staff Writer

I was baptized, as were all my sisters, when we were infants. The ceremony was more a gesture for my grandparents than anything else–I can’t remember a time when either of my parents were actively religious. As a family, we never went to Sunday school, or ever attended church with my parents. Still, I can remember going to a service with my grandparents early one Sunday morning after spending the previous night with them. Kneeling in our pew, listening to the head of the congregation speaking and looking at the grown-ups around me, I began to question it.

I felt no connection in that room to anything spiritual or beyond myself. Nothing reached out to me in terms of religion, and nothing has since. But inside Room 23 in Bellamy last Thursday, standing in a packed room of people who had been touched by a cosmic, divine energy that had shifted their perspective on life in irrevocable ways, experiences that weren’t had in churches, temples, mosques or the like–they were found in psychedelic drugs.

As attendees of the Psychedelic Experience, a class sponsored and held by The Center for Participant Education, a crowd of between 50 and 60 people turned out to discuss a number of topics related to use and social and political implications of psychedelics.

Those who didn’t have a chance to make it out this time may be out of luck; this class isn’t part of FSU’s normal curriculum. While the psychology department offers certain courses that discuss drug-use and their potential effects on the mind, there is no class specifically dealing with psychedelics.

Since it’s not on Florida State’s course listings, the class was run through the CPE, an organization established in the 1970s dedicated to giving students a channel to teach and attend classes in alternative areas of education. Their subjects are certainly beyond the realm of traditional education; theyre the kinds of classes you imagined would be available at college in your teenage perception of university. There’s a class on hallucinations in late November, after lectures on early Southern American communism and “A Brief History of Race.” These lectures are areas of thought and study that exist outside of the box.

In fact, the lack of a formal class on psychedelics was one of the main topics of discussion in the forum, which lasted a half-hour longer than anticipated, because people couldn’t pull themselves away. Answers from those in the room confident enough to speak were varied, moving from the mass-phobia of psychedelics in society, to the governmental red-tape involved in the approval of scientific studies through institutional review boards.

Vocal members of the crowd chimed in their opinions as the room of “psychonauts,” those who experiment with mind-altering drugs, discussed a number of other topics: How to properly use psychedelics like LSD or magic mushrooms in a safe, suitable setting, the history of LSD, the future of psychedelics with conventions like Psychedemia and people’s personal experiences with the drugs.

It was students from every kind of social group, discussing how their individual trips had affected them. They talked about the trip cleaning them out emotionally. One student mentioned a joint ayahuasca trip with his brother as an experience that healed wounds neither realized existed, and brought them closer together. Others discussed hallucinogens as bridges to foster new relationships, and as vehicles for emotional clarity and purity. They brought up “ego-death,” a psychedelic experience in which the perception of one’s self fades away down to their core.

But of all the topics discussed, the key theme that kept the room together was the ideal of pursuing new knowledge and seeking out new experiences that would force them to ask questions. The use of psychedelics, and more importantly, the search for new information seemed to portray perfectly the spirit of the Psychedelic Experience, and its aim to bring unique information to students.